


Black Sheep

by freakylemurcat



Category: Junjou Romantica
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Letters, M/M, Slice of Life, parental replacement, to make up for your own parents being actively terrible people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 07:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15576747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freakylemurcat/pseuds/freakylemurcat
Summary: Tanaka is too good a man to have to deal with the Usami family, who are to a fault difficult.At least one of them is grateful.





	Black Sheep

A handsomely addressed envelope arrives that morning with the post, kanji perfectly square in the centre. Tanaka almost sorts it by accident into Fuyuhiko-sama's pile of mail to be read when he catches the name on the front.  
  
Tanaka Soji, it reads in rich dark ink. It gives him a little pause. Not that he doesn't get letters of course, but most go to his little flat in a neighbouring cheaper area, the one he keeps because sometimes the Usami family are just stifling to be around. Few people know he keeps rooms here as well. Fewer people know his first name for that matter.  
  
The envelope is thick. He weighs it carefully one handed and then tucks it safely in a blazer pocket for later examination. There’s too much to do to let himself be distracted.  
  
It is 1am before Tanaka can call it a day.

In his typical, and wholly uncharming, lackadaisical fashion Fuyuhiko-sama has been causing chaos by not being where he was expected to be, thereby creating ructions with his estranged wife who always aimed to be where he wasn't.

* * *

  
_"I would have divorced her in a second," the man had said, absolutely drunk on high grade sake and no small amount of grief, the night after his mistress had died. "But for this damn company."_  
  
_Tanaka had said nothing, not least about the picture of a small blond child with his mother's features and his father's eyes that had been swept clear of the desk in a fit of grief filled anger. Not his place, he had thought, but paused to right the photo onto a shelf just because he could._  


* * *

So, there had been arguments, two adults at each other’s throats in a three decade long dance, until Tanaka had found the fanciest hotel room he could and Natsuko-sama had been redirected there. He had even run interference for Haruhiko-sama so the poor boy could get to his rooms without being called an interloper again, or worse.  


* * *

_Haruhiko had flinched away from the words like they were daggers into his chest and Tanaka had cursed his own carelessness. This was not Akihiko-sama, who was so numb to his mother's casual cruelty it was like she was throwing darts through fog and leaving only hollow space in her wake. Instead this was a child that recognised the malice for what it was and had no protection from it._  
  
_He had swept in then, with excuses about summer school and dinner, and Natsuko-sama had watched him with dead eyes and said, "How fast you turn traitor, butler. Who employs you again?"_  
  
_Tanaka was employed for the Usami family, and that therefore included this shocked twelve year old with a surname only a month old. He had said nothing and pulled the young master from the room._    


* * *

So now, yes, Tanaka is bone-tired as he shucks his heavy jacket, yanks his cravat out of the knot and kicks his shoes to the side. He hangs the blazer on its rack and retrieves his phone and the letter. He thumbs the phone’s screen to check the time and found a new notification.  
  
There is a email there from Takashashi-kun thanking him for the recipe had sent for Akihiko-sama's favourite childhood dish, with a promise he would follow it to the tee in the manner it was supposed to be made.

Bless the boy's innocent heart, he has a unique way of reading between lines Tanaka hadn't realise he had drawn.

* * *

_Tanaka had given the young master half an hour to cool off, and then quietly knocked on his bedroom door with a tea tray and a kind expression._  
  
_The boy was hunched over his writing desk, scribbling in one of his ubiquitous notebooks. The test paper sat beside him, simultaneously ignored and the focus of all attention in the room.._  
  
_He didn’t look up at Tanaka’s entrance, nor the gentle ceramic tap of the teaservice being set on the little table beside his bookshelves. The pen slalomed to halt whenever Tanaka brought the tea cup over, but he resolutely stared at the window rather than look at another face._  
  
_In another child Tanaka might have thought this rudeness, but this was his poor Akihiko-sama, who had sudden dark shadows under bleak empty eyes. This was a survival mechanism; Tanaka couldn’t blame him one bit._  
  
_“English blend,” he said softly. He kept the teabags in the house exclusively for the young master - his parents thought it a travesty and Haruhiko-sama turned his nose up at it every time. “Would you like your dinner now or later? I’m afraid it will just be you this evening; your mother has gone out and your father has taken Haruhiko-sama...."_  
  
_He tailed off, because the boy’s jaw had tightened abruptly and his eyebrows drawn down. With a child like this, every tiny flinch of body language was a screaming tantrum. Tanaka had gotten good at spotting when to stop._  
  
_“Perhaps something special, to celebrate your hard work?” he suggested hopefully._  
  
_The boy released a soft sigh, seemingly letting go of his sudden tension and shook his head. “No thank you. I’m not hungry."_  
  
_“Maybe later then..?”_  
  
_“I’m not hungry,” repeated Akihiko-sama, with a concrete finality. This wasn’t an argument Tanaka was going to win right now, so he bowed and left just as quietly as he arrived._  
  
_This time Tanaka had waited for two hours, quietly preparing a small simple dish of seasoned noodles and broth from a recipe his own grandmother had always used when he had needed something homemade and heartwarming. He took this up to the room with a fresh glass of lemonade._  
  
_Instead of sitting at his desk, Akihiko-sama was now tucked on his side on top of his bed, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance. A particularly bad day then._  
  
_“I know you said you weren’t hungry,” Tanaka said, eyeing the sadly crumpled knot of paper that had been the test sheet, now abandoned on the floor by the bin. “But I think a snack might make you feel a bit better.” There was little sign of movement, so Tanaka had to resort to minor cruelty. “I made it specially for you.”_  
  
_Akihiko uncurled slowly and let him set the tray on his lap. He still looked unenthused, but picked up the chopsticks and said his thanks for the dish obediently._  
  
_Someday, Tanaka was aware, the effects of his parents’ neglect would entirely destroy the child’s desperate attempts to attract attention by being good and he would lose this bartering chip entirely. In the meantime, if it meant he could get some calories, and maybe a some comfort, into the little scrap then so be it._  
  
_Tanaka tidied bits and pieces - mostly just moving books back to their shelves - and the child cleared the bowl and placed it back neatly on the tray._  
  
_"Feeling better now?" Tanaka had made the mistake of asking as he tidied this away too._  
  
_Akihiko looked at him with the same dead expression of his mother and said, with no small amount of hereditary devastating honesty. "No."_  
  
_So the heartwarming effect was a little hit and miss. Tanaka managed to not sigh with despair and suggested that some sleep might do the trick instead in that case._  


* * *

The letter attracts his attention again. The paper is velvety soft on his fingertips; he's surprised whoever sent it didn’t had it couriered to ameliorate the risk of damage in the mail system.  
  
At least of all the residents in the mansion he's the least likely to be the recipient of an envelope full of anthrax or something else uniquely horrifying.  


* * *

_"Akihiko-sama, no thirteen year old boy should be getting into cars they don't recognise," he exclaimed, perhaps more terse than he had right to be as a servant. "Not least you."_  
  
_Akihiko-sama shrugged and continued to stare from the limo window._  
  
_Tanaka paused in mopping off the sweat on his brow - retrieving a kidnapped child from a police station while not being the boy's legal guardian had been the second most stressful occasion of his life, beaten to the post only by the news of the child's kidnapping two days previously. He suspected his blood pressure was permanently raised by twenty milligrams of mercury._  
  
_"This should go without saying, Akihiko-sama," he started again. He's frustrated and still running on adrenaline from that knock on the door, with Kamijou-kun outside crying that some strange man had whisked his friend up into a black sedan and driven away too fast to tail on his bicycle. The fact the child was now ignoring  him just rubbed him entirely the wrong way. "Look at me!"_  
  
_He pulled the boy's shoulder back and Akihiko-sama turned as bidden. But one look at the boy's face took the wind right out of Tanaka's sails. The bruise was even more livid in the low riding-lights of the limo, swelling one eye shut and trailing into the redness around a split lip._  
  
_Tanaka wanted to say a lot of things about being heir to a one of the richest Japanese financial corporations or being at that strange age of being stuck in the hinterlands of delicate childhood and a handsome young man. He wanted to say something about the bone deep visceral terror he had felt with every minute that passed with no sighting, and how he still wanted to break the man's hands who dared to mark his Akihiko-sama like this._  
  
_He didn’t. He couldn't. That was the job of Fuyuhiko-sama, who was addressing the problem by pretending it didn't exist and working late. So Tanaka was the one in the back of this limo at 3am instead, a job he felt vastly unsuited for._  
  
_"You worry too much, Tanaka-san," said Akihiko finally, when it was obvious the butler couldn’t speak. At least he said it kindly._

 _Tanaka changed his mind - he was also massively underpaid to have to deal with this little heartbreaker._  
  
_"You are getting driven everywhere from now on, young master," said Tanaka finally. "So help me I'll do it myself."_

* * *

  
Inside the envelope is a single rectangle of high quality card and a sheaf of writing paper. The boxy handwriting is instantly recognisable, hits him in the chest like a knife in the heart, and sits at his desk to read carefully.  


 

Dear Tanaka,  
  
I tell Misaki that my childhood was a grand sweeping essay in misery and he tells me I'm being overdramatic. When I have thought about it he is, as he is wont to be in his simplistic way, entirely correct.  
  
I wanted my parents to want me, to have at least one of them who loved me, and I did this with such a single minded intensity I blocked out those who actually did.  
  
So I have decided that what I need to remember is someone patting me on my head and telling me I did well on my exams right up until I was eighteen and pretending I didn't care. Someone who made me entirely separate dinners when I couldn't handle pretending to play happy families at mealtimes. Someone who picked me up from school when I was sick, who mopped my brow when I was feverish, who would have dried tears no doubt if I'd had any will to cry any longer.  
  
You played the role from the second you knelt down in front of me at Narita and told me you would take care of me. You never once broke your word, even when I was an ungrateful brat.  
  
I want you to know that I'm happy now, Tanaka. I found someone who has made me happy, capable of letting me manage it on my own terms. I may never shake off some shadows of my past, but there are parts I want to carry with me regardless. Misaki has let me see this.  
  
Please accept our invitation. I would be delighted to see you there.  
  
Thank you, Tanaka-san,  
  
Akihiko.

  


* * *

_Tanaka had never seen himself a parental type. He had never liked children, thought them loud and messy and obnoxious, which had put off a fair few young women in his youth. Then, as his job within the Usami household had gradually taken over his life it seemed he was safe from ever having to worry about that sort of thing._  
  
_Tanaka had never met the legitimate Usami heir before the age of ten, but he had seen images; posed photographs of a tiny blond child with the biggest bluest eyes on the planet. He could only imagine how spoiled the ten year old scion of a billionaire legacy family must be, and had counted himself lucky not having to deal with it._  
  
_And then, Fuyuhiko-sama’s mistress had died. There were rumours he would be bringing the illegitimate child of that union into his household, and Natsuko-sama did not stand for this usurping for one second. She had announced that the English climate - where she had been escaping from her husband for nearly a decade now - no longer suited her and she and her son would be moving to Japan._  
  
_So Tanaka had met Usami Akihiko in the private terminal of Narita airport at nearly noon on a spring day, a tiny jetlagged waif of a creature rubbing at his eyes in exhaustion. Natusko-sama had swept past without a second glance, apparently with no concern her son was swaying on his feet, and Tanaka had been torn between going after her and staying with this little lost scrap of humanity._  
  
_In the end, borne by some mad instinct, he had knelt by the boy and held out of his hand._  
  
_“Hello, Akihiko-sama,” he had said, in the kindest voice he could muster, “I’m Tanaka Soji. I’ll be looking after you from now on.”._  
  
_Usami Akihiko had taken his hand with his own tiny little fingers and murmured, “Thank you, Tanaka-san.”_  
  
_The boy was almost too tired - too shocked, more like - to walk with him fast enough, so Tanaka had picked him up. For a ten year old, he was tiny; weighing not much more than the hand luggage Tanaka also has to shoulder. His little heart thrummed like a someone keeping double time on a taiko drum, battering against his bony little ribcage and transmitting against the breast of Tanaka’s suit jacket. Some nervous instinct kept his head upright, but no amount of unfamiliarity could beat the tide of jetlag and they hadn't even reached the car by the time the shaggy blond head had bowed to nestle on the butler’s shoulder._  
  
_Tanaka had fallen a little bit in love instantly._     


* * *

In the here and now, Tanaka picks up the fountain pen he kept in the pentray and ticks the box firmly on the invitation. The nib makes a pleasing scratching noise on the plush card and the ink, expensive, dries fast. He'll have it couriered back tomorrow morning, just in case it gets damaged.  
  
Then he picks up his phone and replies to Misaki-kun's message - how he's sure that the dish will be made with exactly the right attitude, no doubts at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I recently caught up on the JR manga. All i want is bb!Akihiko to be loved, goddamnit.
> 
> And you KNOW Tanaka gets invited to Akihiko and Misaki's wedding and the only person who cries more is Takahiro.


End file.
